The terms of that treaty might have been less favourable to the Protestants than they were had the two great Catholic nations of France and Spain been in accord. They had fallen, however, as we have seen, into bitter opposition, which broke out into active war. The real occasion of the war was, as before, the too masterful power which was held in a single hand owing to the accident that the Habsburg family, which governed in Austria, wore the Crown of Spain also. It still possessed those Southern States of the Netherlands which had not won their independence, {79} and it had the Duchy of Milan in Northern Italy as well as Naples in Southern Italy. The Habsburgs still surrounded France. Richelieu's aim was to break this circle. He was ruthless and subtle, and he was single-minded in his determination to make his king not only the despotic ruler of his own country but also powerful throughout Europe. The French monarch was served by his minister as effectively as our Henry VIII. by Wolsey and by Thomas Cromwell. Richelieu had put down a rising of the nobles against the Crown with severity as cruel as that of Henry's last, and worst, minister. The people of France had never secured the rights which the law gave them in England--though the Tudor kings paid those rights little respect--and they gave the nobles no support. In his first aim the great cardinal succeeded. The king became despotic in France. His position in Europe, with so powerful an opponent in the field as the King of Spain, was not so easily secured. It was a curious twist of policy which brought France to the assistance of the Protestant Union in the later years of the Thirty Years' War--France, a Catholic State and under the influence of a cardinal of the Catholic Church, aiding Protestants against Catholics! And it was the aid of France which saved them, notwithstanding that the French armies twice suffered defeat in Germany. Of course the motive that brought France in on the Protestant side was the opportunity of opposing Spain. The Treaty of Westphalia, which really marked the end of the religious wars much more definitely than the Peace of Alais, gave France an extension of territory on her eastern border, at the cost of Germany. It gave Sweden compensation in money and in a fortress or two on the Baltic for what she had done in the war. Switzerland had borne a share in the fighting on the {80} Protestant side, and her independence was recognised by the treaty; and Holland, which had been practically a free country for years, was now formally declared to owe no dependence either to Spain or to the Emperor. The Emperor's power indeed, for a long while vague and declining, was now diminished to almost nothing.